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B&C: Road Swing came out in 1998. How much longer must we wait for the sequel?

SR: I've had a few e-mails from people offering to ride shotgun [on my next trip]. The next book I have coming out is a collection of my longer pieces for SI, mostly on exotic places … that also has a travel aspect to it. The next book I write, I'd prefer if it didn't require me to drive 25,000 miles. That was something I've always wanted to do once. In the last five years I've started to write a weekly column, and I haven't had the time or zeal [for another book].

B&C: How about a novel?

SR: That's something I've wondered if I would have the ability to do. I don't know if I'd have the stamina. When you walk into a Barnes & Noble and see 100,000 books; 98,000 of which I don't want to read, I say, does the world really need another bad novel? The answer may be, Yes, dammit. But I don't want to sit down until I have an idea burning. Even if you do have a good idea, [writing] is drudgery. It's double drudgery if every day you sit down at the computer feels like a coal mine.

B&C: You employ a lot of sarcasm, and your writing style has been described as "irreverent." Do people complain that your columns are too negative?

SR: I have gotten that. I hope that people are paying close attention and know that you can be appropriately sarcastic but also write columns you hope are poignant about worthy subjects. I'd like the column to be surprising each week. I don't want people to know before they reach into the mailbox. That requires different subjects, different tones. I don't want to be a one-note guy who's just funny, just angry, or just weepily nostalgic for sports of 20 years ago. If you're not a little bit—I don't want to say cynical—but if you're not a little bit jaundiced sometimes about what's going on in sports, you're not paying attention. However, if your eyes are not open to all the wonderful stories out there—I just met a kid in Atlanta who was born with no hands or legs who was on his school's wrestling team. If somebody like that doesn't inspire you, doesn't move you, you're dead.

Related: Rushin on flipping between basketball and war coverage

From the New York Times :

BANGKOK—Imagine a city where bars, nightclubs and even movie theaters shut down early, where young people are off the streets by curfew … and where a woman cannot enter a restaurant without a male escort. That wouldn't be the racy, all-night Bangkok that people like to call "fun city." But it is Bangkok—and the rest of Thailand—as imagined by powerful government reformers who have already begun to put a crimp in the fun. Nearly three years ago, they began what they call a "social order" campaign, enforcing a 2 a.m. closing time that nobody had ever bothered about … On March 1, most nightclubs, bars and discos [had] their closing times moved back to midnight, one of the most stringent curfews in Asia. After March 29, under another new regulation, all youngsters under 18 will have to be off the streets by 10 p.m. unless they are with their parents.

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